I found out that Jon was back in Philly and working at Inferno about a week before we confirmed the concert plans. Once I knew we were going, I gave Jon a call. I'd seen a few images of Jon on the Web, but my first real impression was on the phone, and was that he's a softspoken, polite person who REALLY knows what he's talking about.

I described what I wanted: An apadravya whose upper ball exited just behind the coronal ridge. (IOW, a deep-shaft apadravya like a few pictured in BME's Extreme! section.) Jon told me that the ones like this he's known of have been pierced extremely small and then upsized over a period of years. He advised against my having it done that way, but said that if that's what I wanted, we could work out arrangements for him to do it; he preferred that to the thought of my trying it myself. It definitely sounded like more than I was bargaining for, and I don't like the incredible PITA that is the healing period anyway, so I decided to go with a conventional apadravya.

(Ironic note: This was after making a certain nuisance of myself, by asking various net.enabled piercers about shaft apadravyas, for quite a while...)

The concert was Friday, 30 May, and was enjoyable, even though I didn't know much about the music or its surrounding scene; my appointment with Jon Cobb was the next day. Pittsburgh's closest thing to Philly's South Street is East Carson Street, in a part of town called the "South Side." However, after visiting South Street just once, I think Pittsburgh's South Side is just a pale imitation.

I parted company with my friends while they were spending lots of money on CDs at Digital Underground. The couple of hours beforehand were the most nervous I've been in years, bar nothing. I finally screwed up the courage to go do it. My impression on meeting Jon confirmed my phone conversation: Quiet, polite, and a mensch. Jon and I talked for a few minutes more about what I wanted and what to expect, and he took a quick look at the work site. After I filled out the paperwork, we chose the jewelry. Both my tongue and PA were done at 10-gauge, so why not keep a good thing going? He took back a pair of SSS barbells, one 1-1/4" and one 1-3/8", and let them soak in Metacide.

There were two or three other people there, more or less ahead of me. I wandered around the store, cooling my heels, while they went through the piercing room. Then it was my turn.

There's no doubt that Inferno uses an autoclave; it's right in the piercing area. It's a smallish room, but highly functional and without any wasted space. A disposable mat went on the table, I watched him open the autoclave bag, and he went through several pairs of gloves throughout the procedure.

Then we ran into a problem. I'd had my PA done by Hellion House in Febuary 1994 (IOW, more than three years previously). I'd never liked the look of PAs; I only got it because, at the time, I'd thought they were a mandatory prerequisite to an apadravya. Anyway. It had been pierced to the left of my frenulum, but Jon wasn't happy with my PA's placement. He said it was at least 1/8" too far off of the centerline and he didn't want the apadravya's top ball to be wildly off-center. He tried solving this problem by pulling the skin around the PA hole just slightly toward the center and then piercing upward at a slight angle, with the tension still on the lower skin, to place the top ball on my glans' median. The pain was very intense, but short-lived. I basically had to clench pretty much every muscle group to keep myself from jumping off of the table or waving around. Took me a few seconds to unknot my diaphragm so I could continue breathing. It was wrapped in some toilet paper with a glove rubberbanded around it and then I sat out in the main shop for ten or fifteen minutes. Jon took care of one or two more people, then checked up on me. The bleeding had slowed, so we changed the toilet paper and glove, and he sent me on my way.

Several days' hindsight showed me that his stretching the skin was also stretching the PA hole, which I found somewhat annoying. But, by about two days later, it had quieted down almost totally. No real pain, and the chronic discomfort was mild--it was because of the barbell's length. It was getting twisted and "caught" (for lack of a better term) on my underwear, even through the tissue and rubber glove. (I would have preferred the 1-1/4" bar, but we went with the 1-3/8" in case of swelling (which turned out to not be a factor).)

Then, BAM. My first post-pierce erection. Boy, oh boy. I could feel some internal twisting, as the barbell tried to adjust itself to the stretched skin and the angle on which it was pierced. Meanwhile, I suffered.

After a few hours of pain and angsting, I removed it. The skin healed itself closed in less than a day. The only physical indicators that it was ever there are an almost unnoticible differing on my glans' surface, and possibly some scar tissue, deep within the center. I wasn't happy removing it, but I haven't regretted it--I forsaw a lot of general nastiness had I tried healing that pierce.

So, now what? I'm going to try having Jon repierce it in a few months. I'm going to suggest using a slightly curved barbell, so it'll follow the PA's existing tunnel, while still centering the ball on my glans. I think I'm also going to suggest a slightly shorter, since I didn't swell enough to come anywhere close to the 1-3/8" capacity. In the interim, I'm considering having my nipples done...